Fiona Hudson

Fiona Hudson’s cadetship at the Melbourne Herald Sun got off to a bad start in 1996 when she declined the beer offered by a hard-bitten police reporter and instead asked for a cup of Milo. She was banished to the features department until she toughened up, returning to the newsroom to cover the consumer and then medical rounds. After stints as the paper’s Sydney bureau chief and deputy chief-of-staff and city editor, the bosses shipped her off to London. She spent two years covering events in Europe for News Limited mastheads including the Daily Telegraph, Adelaide Advertiser and Courier Mail. As a foreign correspondent she drank Danish beer while in Copenhagen for the births of Princess Mary’s babies, and Turkish coffee while interviewing refugees from the war in Lebanon. On return to Melbourne in 2007 she was appointed assistant editor (news) of the Sunday Herald Sun, where her coverage of the court round won her the 2008 News Award for Specialist Writer of the Year. She is now a senior writer on the daily Herald Sun, where colleagues still insist on calling her “Milo”.